Craig Kennedy, Criminologist
Craig Kennedy, Criminologist is a syndicated American detective television series. Produced in 1951, it was an early example of a series becoming popular in first-run syndication. Reruns were being broadcast in the United States as late as 1958.
Overview
The Craig Kennedy character, created in 1910 by Arthur B. Reeve, solved crimes by means of scientific deductions. In the television adaptation, Donald Woods portrayed Kennedy as a senior staff member of Columbia University, equipped with his own laboratory and audio and video monitors. Kennedy regularly interacted with police inspector J. J. Burke, each offering the other assistance with their cases. Burke was portrayed by Sydney Mason. Lewis Wilson, best known today as the star of the 1943 Batman serial, played crime reporter Walter Jameson.Production
Adrian Weiss was the producer and director. Twenty-six half-hour episodes were filmed in Hollywood at Key-West Studios. The Weiss studio gained sales of the show by promising that if it did not have higher ratings than its competition in its first 13 weeks, there would be no charge for the second 13 weeks' episodes.The show was filmed cheaply but efficiently, with veteran Weiss director Harry L. Fraser on hand for many episodes. Screenwriter Ande Lamb wrote all 26 episodes, credited with the teleplays for 17 shows and the original stories for the other nine. A stock company of character actors played different parts as the series progressed, in the manner of the successful Dragnet series: Jack Mulhall, Trudy Marshall, Lane Bradford, Tom Hubbard, William Justine, and Edna Holland, among others. Unlike Dragnet, which occasionally filmed scenes on location, Craig Kennedy was staged entirely indoors on studio sets. Background music came from the Lee Zahler library of orchestra scores composed for Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s.